City puts focus on synergy in pursuit of high-quality growth

At a news conference during the recent second session of the 16th Beijing Municipal People's Congress, officials said the city is embracing the new year with an enhanced synergy between innovations in technology and industry, giving full play to its role as a pioneer in reform and opening-up while burnishing the "Beijing Service" brand as a hallmark of its vibrant business environment.

All this helps to create a prime environment for business and residency, striking a dynamic balance between the city's high-quality development and high-level security, they added.

Zhang Xin, deputy head of the Beijing Commission of Development and Reform, told the news conference that traditionally advantageous industries, including information services and finance, fueled the city's economic recovery in 2023. Zhang said Beijing will continue to ramp up strengths in innovation this year, including formulating an implementation plan for Huairou Science City; making breakthroughs in core technologies especially in such areas as artificial intelligence, 6G, new materials, and cell and gene therapies; releasing supportive policies on development funds for synthetic biology-enabled biomanufacturing; and building a topnotch comprehensive robotic industry cluster.

At the same time, the city will roll out a series of measures to improve the business environment, creating an across-the-board business-friendly service system that will see human resources, technological innovation and industrial ecosystem, as well as public services including transportation and cultural tourism, given a priority, Zhang added.

Su Guobin, deputy head of the Beijing Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, said his team will focus on helping "specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative" small and medium-sized enterprises resolve the difficulties in getting listed on stock exchange markets, rising costs in financing, and expert and specialist shortage.

The government will leverage policy and service resources to assist qualified SMEs in transformation toward digital operations, offering them more professional services in policy popularization and interpretation, intellectual property and personnel training, and catering to them at different growth stages with a rich variety of cost-effective financial products, Su said.

The bureau's 2024 goal is to scale up the number of such SMEs to more than 10,000 and the combined amount of their operating revenue to over 1 trillion yuan ($139.94 billion).

Meanwhile, Beijing's subcenter in Tongzhou district has maintained investment momentum, attracting hundreds of millions of yuan in investment for four consecutive years, according to Zheng Hao, head of the district.

Focusing on the digital economy, modern finance, advanced manufacturing, business service, cultural tourism and the modern seed industry, Tongzhou is revving up the construction of industrial clusters, Zheng said.

"In 2024, we will continue to promote industries' clustering, digitization, and eco-friendly development, build a global wealth management center and attract more business headquarters and financial institutions," he added.